


Tommy Tapscott Tells a Tale

by IdaArmindaMoss



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-10-07 14:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17367488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdaArmindaMoss/pseuds/IdaArmindaMoss
Summary: Why did Matt and Bess Tapscott REALLY risk getting in trouble with the law to break Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry out of jail?This story was previously published online as part of the ASJ Advent Calendar Project 2018, in an abridged form.  This is the more coherent original.





	Tommy Tapscott Tells a Tale

****

**Hadleyburg, New Mexico Territory, 1880**

       Moving slowly, Matt Tapscott opened the door to the small three-room cabin that he and his family occupied whenever they came to Hadleyburg.  After he had spent extra money to treat the family to a good dinner at the café, he could not help but be a little discouraged that first his son and then his wife had declared that they weren’t hungry and had left the table, unable to finish the meal.  He had, of course, made arrangements to pack up the left-over food and take it with them.  No sense in wasting the food or the money that had paid for it. 

       He wondered what was wrong with his family.  He paid no attention to his own sense of unease, concentrating instead on how soon he could fill out the forms the sheriff had given him and send them in to claim the reward on Heyes and Curry.  In the back of his mind, he could still see the two outlaws as they had looked when he saw them last, leaning against the bars of their jail cell while they watched him discuss their capture with the sheriff.  Caught and behind bars like that, they had both looked a little pathetic—not at all like two dangerous bank and train robbers.  He pushed that thought out of his mind.

       Bess looked up from her mending, greeting her husband with a quiet smile.  Face down on the sofa in the corner, Tommy gave no sign he had heard his father’s entrance.

       “Tommy?”  Matt called his son’s name sharply.  The boy rolled over and sat up, the light from the lamp picking out the tearstains on his face.  Matt came forward quickly, sitting down beside him.  “Tommy, what is it?  What’s the matter?”

       “Nothin’, Pa.”

       “Now don’t you give me that!  There’s no shame in a boy cryin’, or a man, for all that.  I just wanna know what it’s about.”

       Tommy’s eyes went to his mother, who nodded.  “Tell us, son.  Take your time.”

       “Well…,” the boy said, between sniffs.  His mother handed him a clean handkerchief and motioned to him to continue.  “It’s—see, there’s something I gotta tell you, Pa.  You, too, Ma.  I shoulda said it before, but I thought you’d be mad.”

       “We won’t get mad.  Promise,” said Bess gently, with a worried look at her husband. 

       “No.  Nothin’ to get mad about.  We’re here, we’re all safe, and we got this big reward comin’,” said Matt.  “Go ahead.”

       With his parents’ encouragement, Tommy stopped, wiped his nose, then went on.  “It was three days ago.  You ’member, in the wagon?  Mr. Heyes and Mr. Curry asked you to untie their feet so they could keep their balance, ’cause the road was pretty rough there.  So I did that, and then, a little later, you gave me the rifle, Ma, and told me to watch ’em, while you went to take Pa some water.

       “Yes,” said Bess, “and you did just fine.”

       “No, Ma, I didn’t.  You don’t understand.”  Tommy sniffed and wiped his eyes and nose again.  “The wagon went over somethin’ in the road, and there was a big jolt that made me drop the rifle, right in between them.”

       Bess and Matt exchanged looks, worried.  Matt put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder.  “Go on.  What happened?  What’d they do?”

       “The one with the blue eyes—uh, Mr. Curry—put his foot on it in a hurry.  Then they just kinda looked at each other for a minute or two, and Mr. Curry—he put his boot toe underneath the rifle and kicked it back to me.”

       The boy gazed from one of his parents to the other, eyes wide.  Nobody said anything.  After a pause, Tommy continued with his story.  “I said, ‘Why’d you do that?  You could’ve got away!’ and Mr. Curry said they couldn’t pick up the gun with their hands tied.  Said they’d just have to knock me out and hope my parents didn’t hear.”

       The adults looked at one another in consternation.  Matt’s grip on his son’s shoulder tightened.

       “Then,” Tommy added, “Mr. Heyes said—I remember the exact words—‘knockin’ a tough kid like you out, well, that wouldn’t be easy.’  And the other one winked at me!  They didn’t say nothin’ else, and a minute later, you came back, Ma.  And then, this afternoon, the sheriff put ’em in jail, locked ’em up, and they both looked so sad.  Not mean or nothin’, like outlaws would, just sad.  So I—well, anyway, that’s why I didn’t feel like eatin’, Pa.  I’m sorry.”

       “No need to be sorry.  The waitress packed up the food for us to take with us.  It won’t go to waste,” Matt reassured him, rather absently.  His gaze went back to his wife, whose eyes were wide with something almost like fright.  He took her hand for a moment.  “Tommy, since you’re not hungry and it’s gettin’ late, why don’t you go to bed?  Don’t you worry, we ain’t mad.  You didn’t do nothin’ wrong, ’cept I kinda wish you’d told us this earlier.  Go on to bed now.”

       Obediently, the boy got up, exchanged a kiss with his mother, and climbed to his bed in the loft of the inner room, leaving his parents to stare at one another.

       Bess said, in a low, shaken voice, “Matt, he could have been killed!  I don’t even want to think about what might have happened!”

       “Killed, or badly hurt,” he agreed.  “They’d have had to kick him in the head to knock him out, or jumped on top of him—broken bones would have been the least of it.”

       “And they didn’t.”

       “No.  Instead, they winked at him, and gave the rifle back.  No wonder the kid didn’t wanna eat this evening.”

       “They gave up the only chance they had to get away,” said Bess, “because it would have meant hurting a child, and they wouldn’t do that.  We owe them.  We owe them Tommy’s life.  And now they’re gonna spend twenty years in prison.  Matt, you’ve got to do something!”

       “I guess I do.  I’ll figure something out.  I’ll go visit those boys tomorrow.”

       ***   ***   ***

       The next day, after visiting the jail, Matt Tapscott returned to the cabin.  Tommy was outside, playing with a couple of other boys, so he went straight to the point.  “Bess, I tried to smuggle a gun in—” he extracted his Colt Pocket Pistol from the back of his trousers and laid it on the table “—but the sheriff said visitors had to be searched, so of course he found it and kept it till I finished talkin’ to Heyes and Curry.  I don’t know if they realized what I was tryin’ to do or not.  I don’t think the sheriff did.  Anyways, I asked ’em how they liked the food, and they said it was pretty bad, so I said maybe you could cook up somethin’ for ’em tomorrow.  Then I left.  Wasn’t much to stay for.  They both looked—well, Heyes said they wasn’t feelin’ too chipper, ’cause of waitin’ to be sent off to Wyoming for trial.  They thanked me for comin’, though.”

       Bess Tapscott was thinking.  “I could bake a blackberry pie.  I’ve got the blackberries I put up earlier in the summer.”

       “A pie, that’s it!  And put the gun in it, just like they say in them dime novels Tommy reads.  D’you think you could do that?”

       She looked doubtful.  “Well, yes, I could, if you don’t think the gun would go off while it was baking.”

       “Oh, no, it won’t go off.”  Now Matt was on familiar ground, since he worked with gunpowder and other explosives frequently in the hard-rock mining that his prospecting sometimes entailed.  “Oven wouldn’t be hot enough.  It’ll be all right if I make sure the charges, wads, and balls are rammed down tight with no spilled powder.  That way the powder won’t be wet, and they can use the gun _and_ eat the pie.”

 

**Hadleyburg, three weeks later**

       Pressing into the crowd at the door of the courthouse, Matt and Bess Tapscott, just released from custody, watched as Detective Harry Briscoe of the Bannerman Agency lit the fuse on a large rocket and stepped back.  The firework soared into the sky from the iron frame that Briscoe had set up in the street and burst in a shower of sparks.

       As the knot of people around them began to disperse, Tommy Tapscott slipped from the hands of the woman who had been looking after him and dashed up to his parents.  “Look, Ma, Pa!  Wasn’t that great?  But why’s Detective Briscoe settin’ off fireworks?”

       “He said he was celebratin’,” replied Matt.  “But I wonder ….”  He looked around to make sure no one was within earshot, and lowered his voice.  “That rocket’d make an awfully good signal.  Wonder if those boys are somewhere around?  I’d kinda like to thank ’em.  I guess there ain’t much doubt who paid for the lawyer.”

       Counselor Brubaker came up behind them.  “Very astute, Mr. Tapscott.  May I suggest that you allow me to take you and your wife and son out to a steak dinner at the hotel?  We can discuss this further there.”

       “Oh, of course!  Thank you, Mr. Brubaker.  That’s very kind of you,” responded Bess, putting her arm around Tommy’s shoulders.  The four walked down the street to the hotel together.

       Over the best steak dinner in town, which Brubaker had arranged to be served to them in a small private area shut off from the main dining room, Matt looked at the smart lawyer.  “Well, Mr. Brubaker?  Is it true?  Did Heyes and Curry pay for your services, and was Briscoe signalling to them about the outcome of the trial?”

       “Yes, to both questions,” replied the lawyer in a low voice.  “For obvious reasons, it was not wise for them to enter the town, so it’s probable that you’ll never see them again.  I don’t know precisely when I’ll see them, either, but when I do, I’ll tell them you desired to thank them.  They know that, Mr. Tapscott, and they don’t really want to be thanked.  They felt they owed you a debt, not the other way around.  And incidentally, they asked me to give you this, when I could find an opportunity to do so discreetly.”  He passed over a fat, sealed envelope.  “I’d suggest waiting to open that until you are well away from here, and then perhaps banking its contents in a different town.  It is the five thousand dollars yet remaining from the amount that Heyes won at the crooked gambling casino in Colorado Springs.  They wanted you to have it, since you gave up the possibility of getting the reward on them.  They remembered you wanted to send Tommy to school and get a better place to live.”

       Matt and Bess Tapscott exchanged wondering smiles, while Tommy made short work of his steak.

    


End file.
